I’ve been posting a lot of the HPI videos recently, mostly for posterity’s sake, but here’s the one most relevant to drifting, the one and only volume of Drift Battle DVD!

For those that don’t know, Drift Battle was an Australian drift-only magazine that is no longer published. It was put together by Ben Ellis, who was the editor of High Performance Imports at the time, and now runs the Otomoto parts shop in Sydney.

Just like HPI volume 10, I was similarly involved in the production of this one, doing the narration, the CG-animated segment leads, and also starring in a special little segment further down the page…

This is what Aussie drifting was like in 2004. I remember being blown away watching Tezuka do fifth-gear limiter entries on the front straight of Queensland Raceway in Darren’s C33 Laurel.

This one contains some of the best in-car AE86 drift footage ever, featuring very loose driving by Tetsuya Hibino and Ken Satoh at Nakayama Circuit.

Another round of the Drift Nationals. At least you don’t really see the kinds of “rolling burnout” drifts these days that were popular back then.

Tsukasa Kamiya’s S14 was pretty hot at the time. He still regularly runs track days around Tokyo.

Want to learn to drift? Let the 24-year-old version of me teach you something!

これはめっちゃ恥ずかしいです。２００４年のアレクシ先生のドリフトレッスンです！

Most of this still holds pretty true, but we’ve come a long way since then. The can of Sprite or whatever was there because I was a bit late getting to the track and ate drive-through Red Rooster from Narellan on the way to Oran Park.

Hey Alexi, just letting you know i subscribed to Drift Battle magazine and got every copy here still, lol. i also got all the hpi dvds and Drift Battle as well. These dvds and magazines got me into drifting and i still love it to this day, i was actually at the event at QR where Tezuka was smashing Darrens laurel about. I’m yet to take turn 1 in 5th lol. Good work mang, love it.

Those were the days. Seeing Dave do his Blair Witch intro to ‘Somewhere dark’ still cracks me up. As does remembering that exposed drain thing that Ben stepped into in the dark at the touge that time and the sound of the BBQ Chickens rattling through a stock R32 stereo